The Ideas Board is currently being updated and will be back in the next few hours
Welcome to the RailAdvent Ideas page!
Here you can submit your ideas for new features or changes you would like to see on the website, as well as being able to vote on ideas that others have already suggested.
We are looking for ideas large and small, it might be a small change to an existing feature, or it could be a whole new feature that we don’t have on the website currently.
To submit an idea or to vote, you will need to be signed in to RailAdvent.
Taking LocoStop to the Next Level
Earlier in 2024 we moved LocoStop to a new community platform to enable us to introduce more features and build foundations for app development in the future.
The time has now come to add 2 of those extra features and get feedback from you of how these might be best created.
We are now ready to add Groups and Forum Discussions to Locostop, and will be part of our plans for our upcoming App.
If you are interested in helping then read on and find out how below.
First up, a quick explanation of Groups and Forums and how these will interact with the existing activity feed
The existing activity feed at www.railadvent.co.uk/locostop lists is basically a long list of activity in date order. Whenever a picture is posted or some other activity is created an entry appears. This will be just the same for things posted in public Groups and Forums, they will also appear on the activity feed. So for any users who just want to scroll down the list they can continue to do so, although as more content is posted it will become a longer list to scroll through
Groups
Groups work in a similar way to Facebook Groups and allow similar content to be collected in one place. Any messages, pictures etc are posted within that group to keep them together as a collection. Each item also appears in the main LocoStop activity feed.
Having things in Groups means that people can join a group and subscribe to updates to be kept up to date on the topics they are most interested in.
Groups can have users who are moderators. Groups can have a document library and a Group could also have its own Forum. It may also be possible for some members to create their own group.
Forums
Forums have been around on the internet for many years and allow users to create topics or discussions.
Although similar to group posts, they provide a much more structured way of presenting the information and a way to collate replies from other users all in one place. In addition, any discussions a user has contributed to appear under their “My Discussions” link
Forums can have sub forums, for example there could be a Heritage Forum with sub forums for rolling stock, galas etc.
Although forums are usually separate from groups, a group could have its own dedicated Forum
How you can help!
We are looking for a small number of regular website users to join us in a discussion about Groups and Forums, we would like some feedback on how you would organise them and the subjects you would like to see covered.
As some of the features are currently only accessible to monthly or annual subscribers, we primarily need existing subscribers to come forward, we do however also want a couple of people who regularly visit the site but do not subscribe.
If you are interested in joining the discussions, then please email [email protected] to say you are interested, please make sure the email is sent using the address associated with your RailAdvent account.